ve been a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,
and, therefore, has led the long procession of the broken-hearted
toward hope and peace. There is no other place known among men for the
cultivation of sympathy except the school of suffering.

If possible, faith even more than sympathy is dependent on struggle.
There is no other conceivable means by which it can be acquired. It
cannot be imparted. No multiplying of words increases faith. If one has
been in the blackest darkness and some way, he knows not how, has been
led out into light, it will be easier for him to think that the same
experience may be realized again. If every sorrow has had in it some
hidden seed of blessing; if the overcoming of hindrances has ever
increased strength; if at the very moment that calamity seemed ready to
destroy the storm has blown around, and this has occurred again and
again, it is impossible to refrain from expecting, or at least hoping,
that behind the darkness an unseen hand is making things to work for
good. Faith is essential to courage. He never cares to struggle who
knows that failure is just ahead. Courage is required as the soul
progresses, and becomes more deeply conscious of the mysteries and
enemies by which it is surrounded. Faith results from the experience of
beneficent leading. If one has been guided by love through many periods,
and if that love has always been found waiting for its object on every
corner of life, it will, ere long, be expected, watched for, and
trusted.

Strength, vision, sympathy, courage, the fair attributes of the soul,
all appear as it overcomes difficulties, fights doubts, goes deep into
sorrow, and thus learns to realize that it is being led. It is easy to
see how sorrow, pain, and death in the older legends and poetry were so
often spoken of as beneficent angels. They are like those Sisters of
Charity who hide beneath their long black bonnets serene and angelic
faces. The austere in human life has never yet been explained, but it
has been justified millions of times, and will be justified every time a
human soul rises toward the goal for which all were created and toward
which all, slowly or swiftly, are moving.

These conclusions have many confirmations, and with some of them it will
be worth while to spend a little time. Every thinking man's experience
assures him that he grows by overcoming. Emerson has finely said that we
have occasion to thank our faults, by which he means limitation